CHAPTER
18
In
chapter 17 we saw the destruction of
the false churches, or maybe we should say the false church, because
when this
time comes the Catholic Church represented by the church at Thyatira
will have
the protestant churches represented by the church at Sardis and the
apostate
Baptist churches represented by the church at Laodicea under her filthy
wings.
When our Lord’s saints are caught up to ever be with Him, there won’t
be a true
Baptist church left in the whole world. Then the Thyatira churches, the
Sardis
churches, and the Laodicean churches will be merged into one world
church.
In this great world church under the wings of the pope the doctrine of the creation will have been supplanted altogether by the teaching of evolution. The Bible will be called nothing but paper with ink on it. Great doctrines such as the Trinity, the Blood Atonement, the sacrificial death of Christ, and His resurrection will not so much as be mentioned among them. In fact, these doctrines are already anathema in the eyes of even the apostate Baptists of today (1969). In just eleven short years after the death of the beloved pastor who loved the Bible, preached the Bible, and contended for it, one convention church I know of has a pastor who holds up a Bible before the young people in his church and says, “This you see is paper and this you see on this paper is ink.” When one of his Sunday School teachers tried to prove by him that when God said let us make man He was talking about the Trinity, he retorted, “I don’t know, I wasn’t there.” His daughter said in class, I know about the death of Jesus, and I know about His burial, but I don’t know anything about His resurrection. This should give us some idea of what this great world church will preach and teach. In verse 1 John saw another angel come down from heaven. Some commentators hold this angel to be our Lord, but I contend that He is not just another angel. This angel cries in verse 2 with a loud voice, or strong voice as he announces the fall of Babylon. In Isaiah 21:9 we read, “Babylon is fallen, is fallen.” In Jeremiah 51:8 it is “Babylon is suddenly fallen and destroyed.” In Revelation 14:8 it is “Babylon is fallen, is fallen.” And in Revelation 18:2 it is “Babylon the great is fallen, is fallen.” Now, when the Holy Spirit who is the author of the Bible says something that He has already said in another place it is not because He has forgotten that He had already said it. Neither does He do it in order to fill up space just to make His book larger. But He does it for emphasis. He does it to show us the great importance attached to the thing that is being repeated. With that in mind, let us examine the expression “Babylon is fallen.” In the first place, it is found in four different places in the Scriptures, and in three of them it is said twice. That makes seven times that God says in His Word that Babylon is fallen. In
Scripture the number seven is the number of
completion. God completed His creative work in seven days. He completed
His
prophecy concerning this church age in His seven letters to the seven
churches
in Asia. 1 am aware that the liberalistic, modernistic atheists, and
some God
fearing and Bible loving Christians refuse to see any prophecy
connected with
these letters. But God is the one who called the book of Revelation a
book of
prophecy. In Revelation 1:3 He says, “Blessed
is he that readeth, and they that hear the words of this
prophecy.” Then in Revelation 22:7 He says, “Blessed is he that keepeth the
sayings of the prophecy of this book.” He says this book is
a book
of prophecy the second time for emphasis, if you please. God
saying Babylon is fallen seven times, and
seven being the number of completion brings two things to my mind.
First, it means
that God’s great hatred, His utter distrust and His total abhorrence of
this
thing called Babylon is complete. He completely hates and abhors it.
Then it
also means that the fall and destruction of this thing will be complete. Now,
let us consider what this thing is that God
hates and abhors so completely and whose destruction is to be so
complete.
First, let us take a look at the beginning of this thing called
Babylon. I
would say to begin with, it is not the ancient city of Babylon, nor is
it the Babylonian
Empire that is given so much space in God’s precious Book. Neither this
ancient
city, nor this empire was ever drunk on “the
blood of the saints” who were martyred hundreds of years later, Revelation
17:6. Neither did this city nor this empire ever rule “over
the kings of the earth”, Revelation 17:18. This thing
that God is talking about is called. “Mystery,
Babylon The Great, The Mother of Harlots and Abominations of the Earth,”
Revelation 17:5. And God
is the one who called her that. In
Genesis 10: 8-10 we learn
that Nimrod began to be a “mighty man in the earth”.
And, that he
was “a mighty hunter before the Lord”.
In Genesis 25:27 Esau is spoken of as a cunning hunter; a man
of the
field. But he is not said to be a hunter before the Lord. No doubt,
Esau hunted
wild game in the fields, but I am convinced that Nimrod hunted for the
souls of
men before the very eyes of the Lord. His name means “The Rebel” and
this is
practically the same expression as “That
wicked” in II Thessalonians 2:8.
We
notice that the beginning of Nimrod’s kingdom
was Babel. In that day the word Babel meant “The gate of God.” So, in
reality,
when Nimrod and his followers said, “Let
us”
make us “a tower whose top may reach unto
heaven,
(or into the heavens),” they were really saying, “Let us make us a way
to
heaven.” In John 14:6 Jesus said “I am the way,”
but these people, like most church people
today, were not satisfied with that way. So, they were saying “Let us
make us a
way to heaven.” This tower, as you know, was not completed by Nimrod
because
God came down and confounded their tongues. That is, He caused some of
them to
speak one language and others to speak another. We do not know how
languages
were introduced here, but we can rest assured that this was one of the
truly
great miracles of all times. But Nimrod and his followers planned and
started this
tower of Babel which, according to Herodotus, was later completed.
According to
him this tower consisted of eight towers each 75 feet high, one on top
of the
other. Then on top of this 600 foot structure was their chapel, or
sanctuary
which was 60 feet high. According to Herodotus this was the most
elaborately
furnished place of worship ever devised by man. They had a solid gold
image of
their chief god Bel that was 45 feet high and valued at 17 1/2 million
dollars.
The complete furnishings of this chapel were valued at 200 million
dollars. The
worship connected with this tower was the beginning of the vast
religious
empire that God hates and abhors so completely and whose destruction is
to be
so complete in God’s own good time.
Their
religion was built around Nimrod’s wife
Semeramis who became the first queen of heaven. According to their
tradition,
Semeramis had a son named Tammuz who was slain by a wild boar, and
after 40
days came back to life. This is where this great religious empire got
her
Lenten season when her poor members have to leave off a bottle of beer
a day,
or a pack of cigarettes a week, or something else in honor of their god
Tammuz.
Of course they do not call him Tammuz now. That would give them away.
The
worship of this queen of heaven and her son spread to the uttermost
parts of
the earth in a short time. In Jeremiah’s time the worship of this queen
of
heaven had already spread to Jerusalem. In Jeremiah 7:17-18 we read, “Seest thou not what they do in the cities
of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem? The children gather
wood, and
the fathers kindle the fire, and the women knead their dough,
to make
cakes to the queen of heaven, and to pour out drink offerings unto
other gods,
that they may provoke me to anger.” When
Babylon fell to the Medes and Persians in
538 B.C. this religious empire moved her headquarters from Babylon to
Pergamos.
The priests who ruled over this vast empire were called pontifex. Their
chief
priest, or top man was called Pontifex Maximus. Please keep this title
“pontifex
maximus” in mind as we shall see later who wears that title today. Upon
the
death of Attallus III in 183 B.C. Pergamos fell to Rome. The religious
capital
of the world was then moved to Rome where it will remain until this
whole
religious empire is destroyed, Revelation 17:16. When the Roman
Empire
came into being, the Roman Emperor took the title “Pontifex Maximus.”
He was
thus the ruler over the political empire and also over the religious
empire.
This continued for some 500 years until Theodosius came to the throne
in 379
A.D. Theodosius refused to accept the title “Pontifex Maximus.” So,
this title
was then bestowed upon the top religious leader who was the Bishop of
Rome.
Sometime later the Bishop of Rome was declared to be the universal head
of this
empire by one of the cut throat Emperors of Rome. This was the
beginning of the
popes of Rome. So today Pope Paul’s official title for all formal
occasions is “Pontifex
Maximus’ which means that he is ruler over the Catholic Church, or the
ancient
Babylonian Mysticism whichever way you wish to say it. They are one and
the
same. The
Catholic Church has done a lot of face
lifting in this age in which we live. She does not want people to know
that she
is more than 4,000 years old. That would prove her to be entirely too
old for
her to be the church that Christ established while here on earth. She
wants to
fool people into believing that she is that church. So her queen of
heaven is
no longer called Semeramis. She has assumed an alias, and that alias is
the
beautiful name “Mary.” Her god Tammuz is no longer called Tammuz. He
too has
assumed an alias, and that alias is the precious name “Jesus.” But if
you care
to lift the mask and look closely you can see that they are the same
old
Semeramis and Tammuz. Why
should God not hate this old Babylonian
Mystic religion alias the Catholic Church? She is the one who put
leaven in His
meal, Matthew 13:33. She is “that
woman Jezebel” in the Thyatira Church “who
calleth herself a prophetess” and seduces His servants, Revelation
2:20.
She is the one who has beheaded, burned at the stake, thrown to hungry
lions,
and buried alive untold thousands of His saints. And she is still ready
and
anxious to do the same thing today wherever and whenever she can do it
and get
by with it. She has tried through the centuries to destroy our Lord’s
churches,
His Bride to be. She has filled the world to overflowing with idol gods
and
false doctrines. She has even seduced our Lord’s own church to accept
many of
her idols, her days, months, seasons, and years, and all too many of
her false
doctrines. Then
this old whore “the mother of harlots and abominations of
the earth” who is drunk
on the blood of the saints, parades herself up and down the land today
as the
Bride of Christ. To be sure, His ways are not our ways. No decent,
upright man
could stand by while some old drunken prostitute paraded herself on the
streets
as his bride. But praise His dear name, the time is coming, and may it
be soon,
when she shall be utterly destroyed. In Revelation 17:16-18 we
read, “And the
ten horns (kings)
which
thou sawest
upon (and)
the
beast, these shall hate the whore, and shall make
her desolate and naked, and shall eat her flesh, and burn her with
fire. For
God hath put in their hearts to fulfil his will, and to agree, and give
their
kingdom unto the beast, until the words of God shall be fulfilled. And
the
woman which thou sawest is that great city, which reigneth over the
kings of
the earth.”
The
great city here is
used interchangeably with the religious system that has its
headquarters there.
Who rules over the kings, or rulers of the earth today but the Catholic
Church?
When this great religious empire has been destroyed we see the world in
Revelation
18:19 casting “dust upon their heads”,
“weeping and wailing” and lamenting
their great loss. But in Revelation 18:20 God tells His people
to
rejoice because He has avenged us on her.
You
may say, do Catholics know that their Jesus
is not the Jesus we know and serve? I am convinced that many Catholics
sincerely believe we have the same Jesus. But the hierarchy knows
better. That
is why they are afraid for their people to read the Bible. I am told
that Pope
Leo X admitted privately that the Catholic religion was a farce. Then
the three
Bishops who wrote Pope Julius III advising him as to what to do when
many were
leaving the Catholic Church said, “To sum it all up, that book (the
Bible) is
the one, more than any other, that has raised against us these
whirlwinds and
tempests whereby we were almost swept away; and in fact if anyone
examines it
diligently, and then contrasts therewith the practice of our church, he
will
perceive the great discordance, and that our doctrine is utterly
different
from, and often very contrary to it; which if the people understand,
they will
not cease their clamor against us till all be divulged, and then we
shall
become an object of universal scorn and hatred,” (pages 22-23 Death of
the Pope
by John R. Gilpin). Will
you cast dust upon your head, weep, wail,
and lament when this old whore is destroyed, or will you be one of
those whom
the Lord tells to rejoice? We
are told that when Babylon has fallen the
place becomes the dwelling place of demons (not devils) and of every
foul or
evil spirit, and the cage or haunt of every unclean bird. In Matthew
13:4
we see the fowls devouring the seed that the sower had sown. In verse 19
we see that these fowls represent the “wicked
one”. And in verse 32 we
see the birds lodging, or being at home in the branches of the mustard
tree
which represents the false churches. So here in the verse before us
fallen
Babylon (Rome) becomes the haunt of old Satan himself. In
verse 3 “all the nations have drunk of the wine of
the wrath of her fornication”.
There is not a nation under heaven today that has not been affected to
some
extent by her fornication, that is, by her idol worship. So, when the
day of
reckoning comes, all the nations will be affected by it also. Even the
kings,
or rulers of the nations “have committed
fornication with her”, that is, they have joined in with her in the
worship
of her idol gods. We
also see that the merchants of the earth have
become rich through means of the abundance of her delicacies. The
amount of
trade that is connected with this Mystery Babylon would stagger the
imagination
of a Rockefeller or a Ford. I understand that Pope Paul is the richest
man in
the world today. And one only has to observe the splendor and the
magnificence
of all that goes with Catholicism to see to some extent the great
wealth that
comes to the merchants who traffic in all the gorgeous array that goes
with the
Catholic Church. And
not only is this fabulous trade carried on
with the Catholic Church today, it has spilled over into her harlot
daughters,
including her foster daughter, the apostate Baptists. H. A. Ironside
once said “There
is many a Babylonish garment today hidden in Protestant tents.” These
Babylonish garments are no longer hidden. They are in plain view of
every one.
A Methodist friend of mine said to me that if I were to go into the
First
Methodist Church of Birmingham I would not be able to tell it from a
Catholic
Church. And I say unto you, many Baptist churches of today are no
better. No
wonder the merchants of the earth are growing rich from the delicacies
of this
old whore. Then
in verse 4 we see that which should
startle every born again person in any of these apostate churches. Here
our
Lord says, “Come out of her, my
people, that ye be not partakers of her sins, and that ye receive not
of her
plagues.” But still there are those whom we have reason to
believe
are blood-bought saints who remain in these churches when they know
their
pastor does not believe the Bible to be the inspired Word of God, and
when they
know he has no love for the great Bible doctrines. They seem to have
more fear
of the persecution that goes with separation from all this than they
have of
meeting their Lord with all that stain and filth upon them. In
verse 5 we see that the sins of these
apostate churches have reached to heaven. These people who remain in
all this
mess for the sake of popularity and for fear of persecution seem to
think that
God is overlooking all the terrible things that go on in what they are
calling
their church, but in the coming day they will find that these sins of
which
they are part and parcel to have reached unto heaven itself. God will
remember
every one of her iniquities. The happiest years of my life have been
the nine
years since I obeyed God’s precious Word and came out of her. What a
real joy
it is to be a part of a church that has no social program nor any
athletic
program. What a blessing it is to be a part of a church that is not
concerned
in any way about making this a better world, but rather in helping
people to be
ready for a better world. How comforting to know that one is not
supporting in
any the modernism, neo-orthodoxism and other infidelisms, that prevails
in the
religious system of today. When I hear, or read of Baptists who deny
the record
of creation in Genesis, the Trinity, the Virgin Birth, the Blood
Atonement, the
resurrection, and the second coming of our Lord, I rejoice with
exceeding great
joy because neither my church nor I are lending any support, either
moral or
financial to these infidels. No matter how sincere the Convention
Baptist is,
he is lending both moral and financial support to them, and, whether he
likes
it or not, he is guilty of, and partaker of their evil deeds. I say
this out of
a heart of love for them. In
verse 6 God says reward her double.
And in verse 7 He tells us why. He says “She
hath glorified herself and lived deliciously.” How she
has glorified herself by assuming the name “Church.” She even calls
herself the
bride of Christ. And how she does live in luxury, and that tax free.
She drives
expensive automobiles, but pays no tax on them. She teaches in public
school
and draws her salary as the other teachers do, but she still pays no
income
tax. She saith in her heart, “I sit
a queen, and am no widow, and shall see no sorrow.” She
rides high
in this world, but how hot she burns in the next one. In
verse 8 her plagues are to “come in one day”.
And they are real
plagues, not only do they include death, mourning and famine, but they
also
include utter burning with fire. This is not the lake of fire in the
future but
it will, I believe, be here in this world. In II Peter 3:7
Wuest’s
translation says, “But the present
heavens and the earth by the same word have been stored with fire,
being kept
so guarded with a view to the Day of Judgment and eternal misery of men
destitute of reverential awe toward God.” And what men are more
destitute
of reverential awe toward God than the terrible religious system in the
world
today? And the reason these plagues are so severe and so sure is
because “strong is the Lord God who judgeth
her.” This is not the God you hear about in ninety-nine
percent of
the Baptist pulpits today. He is not the God that has been dethroned in
order
that man may be enthroned. This is the God who “doeth
according to His will in the army of heaven, and among the
inhabitants
of the earth:”
He is the one Job was talking about when he
said, “I know that thou canst do
every thing.” In
verse 9 the rulers of the world who
have committed fornication with this old whore and who have lived
luxuriously
with her, or in her favor, will wail and mourn over her as if they had
lost
their very dearest friend. We have seen our ruler bowing and scraping
and
kissing the toe of the pope. And not only that but encouraging members
of his
family to become Catholic apparently to court the favor of Catholics. And
in verse 10 we see these rulers
keeping their distance as they weep and wail, and as they say “Alas, Alas (Woe, Woe), that great city
Babylon”. There are
those, or maybe I should say, there were those in past generations who
held to
the idea that this great city will be the ancient city of Babylon over
on the
Euphrates River which will have been rebuilt. One highly respected
writer on
this subject says that the time lapse between the rapture and the
coming down
to the earth could be as long as thirty years, or even longer in order
to give
time for rebuilding the ancient city of Babylon. I respect his zeal,
hut not
his wisdom in this matter. The
Babylon that God hates so much left the
banks of the Euphrates River twenty-five hundred years ago. On her
flight to
Rome she stopped over in Pergamos for three or four hundred years. Now
for more
than two thousand years she has nested on the banks of the Tiber River.
She has
become a great city there, and has glorified herself by calling herself
“the
eternal city” which is nothing less than blasphemy. She has provoked
Almighty
God to anger, even to great wrath. So in one hour is her judgment come. In
verse 1 we learn that the rulers of
the world are not the only mourners at this ghastly funeral. Here we
see the
merchants of the earth joining in with the rulers in their weeping and
wailing.
I am not saying that all merchants wallow in the slime and filth of
Catholicism
in order to receive her favors, but I am saying that I am convinced
that many
of them do. In former years I had a friend whose parents were
Catholics. After
I had attended his mother’s Catholic funeral he said to me that he knew
there
was nothing to the Catholic Church. But a few years later his father
died and
left a large grocery store to him. This made a world of difference in
this
friend of mine. He tried to justify this change by saying that most of
the
wholesale businesses were owned and operated by Catholics, and that
most of
their salesmen were Catholics. He then capped it off by saying that
Catholic
merchants got the best deals. Yes, the merchants live luxuriously with
the
whore today, but what about tomorrow? No one buys their merchandise any
more. In
verses 12 and 13 we are given a
long list of the things that the Catholic Church and her harlot
daughters have
caused to be profitable items in the merchant’s business. And, if you
notice,
this list includes even the bodies and souls of people. Martin Luther
who was a
Catholic priest until he became the Lutheran papa once said, “In Rome
they sell
everything. They would sell the Father, and sell the Son, and sell the
Holy
Ghost,” and he ought to know. Verse
14 appears to be one of the
portions of Scripture which seems to baffle the translators. None of
them seem
to be able to make it clear enough for us common folk to understand it.
The New
English version seems to make it more clear to me than any of the
others I have
seen. This version says, “The fruit you
longed for, they will say, is gone from you; all the glitter and
glamour are
lost, never to be yours again.” It seems that the merchants are
saying that
the things that Catholicism and Protestantism lusted after - robes,
garments,
idols and countless other things are gone from them and therefore, the
glitter
and glamour of these things are lost.
In
verses 15-19 we see a repetition
somewhat of the great grief on the
part of the merchants over their loss due to their having in stock so
much
merchandise that has suddenly become worthless. We also see the ship
owners and
the sailors, and no doubt this also includes freight lines on land as
well as
on the sea, as they join in with the merchants in this great lament. But
what a change of scene do we see in verse 20.
Here God tells His people to rejoice over all this. And they are to do
this
rejoicing because God has avenged them on her, that is, He has sent all
this
terrible judgment upon this wicked religious system as a compensation
to His
people because of the way she has treated them. He says “Vengeance is mine; I will repay.”
So when our enemies persecute us we should leave the vengeance to our
Lord, and
our time for rejoicing will come in due time.
In
verse 21 a mighty angel takes “a stone like a great
millstone” which
he casts into the sea in order to stress the violent manner in which
this great
city, Rome which is here called Babylon is to be utterly destroyed. Due
to the
fact that Rome has been the home base for the old whore now for more
than two
thousand years, the last twelve or fifteen hundred years of it under
the guise
of a church, she is called Babylon.
Verses
22-23 show how complete this
destruction is to be. Even
throughout the thousand year reign of our Lord here on the earth He
will not
permit any rejoicing or any business house of any kind to be
established here
where Rome boasts of her being the eternal city. God will show her just
how
eternal she is. We are given two reasons for this. In the latter part
of verse 23
He says “For by thy sorceries were
all nations deceived.” And certainly all the nations of the
earth
today are deceived by the enchantments of the Catholic Church. And in
verse 24
we are told that the other reason is because the blood of His saints is
found
in her. Through the centuries this old whore has been the deadly enemy
of the
Lord’s people. She says herself in her official encyclopedia that she
killed so
many heretics during the Spanish Inquisition that they could not be
counted.
Our Lord’s saints are today, and always have been heretics in her eyes.
In her
heart she desires to kill every one of us today. Therefore, in the eyes
of our
Lord she is just as guilty of our death as if she had the opportunity
to do
that which she desires so much to do. |